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kwnnaptr's review against another edition
dark
emotional
inspiring
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
kiriamarin's review against another edition
3.0
Sometimes I'm amazed how the past literature of about eighty years ago could be considered subversive and scandalous. Times changed ,the human heart remains faithful to love and darkness and fleeting illusions. Who wants to be truly alone? A voyeur in a dark hotel room spying people intimacy, secrets,is really not about and only sex, but the veil that blinds everyday lives of strangers of the light of the day. A strange story that would be better written by a fearless writer as Marguerite Duras, here the writer and his main character seems a virgin/melancholy man wandering alone and trembling in a dark hotem room.
david_rhee's review against another edition
3.0
Henri Barbusse's Hell or Inferno starts out great, and while it doesn't exactly fall flat later it was a bit of a disappointing development for me. I really liked the theme he was building upon at the beginning. The unnamed hero cannot reconcile the two sharply contrasting faces people present. One is the drone-like dramaturgical plastic facade projected to others at common meals in the dinner hall. They smile politely and say the right things, however, these are not their real selves. He observes people's real and honest selves through a hole in the wall shared by his hotel room and his neighbor's. Ironically, the "observees" become fully and radiantly present when the observer is thought to be absent, but when he is present before them they retreat into a different skin. Lots of readers think this is a book about a peeping Tom, but I believe this hasty moral assessment misleads them further from the true themes. I feel Barbusse had a very fertile set of ideas in his hands, but his development ran out of legs when he seemed to channel his political and anti-religious agenda through his narrative. I suspect I have received an incorrect impression on the latter, but the shift nevertheless led me to lose interest rapidly.
jiafeiservant22's review against another edition
2.75
Conceited straight white man tries to impress with immense language skills but also immense misogynism.
jelli's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
taitmckenzie's review against another edition
4.0
Staring through a hole in the wall was never so breathtakingly revealing about the dire truths of being human.
msand3's review against another edition
5.0
Instantly moves to the list of my favorite novels of all time. I was expecting a scandalous novel of a perverted voyeur (think Norman Bates in Robert Bloch’s [b:Psycho|156427|Psycho (Psycho #1)|Robert Bloch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393286878l/156427._SY75_.jpg|3279468]), but was surprised to find a novel about a sensitive, empathetic, reflective man who is searching for meaning and a shared sense of humanity by witnessing all that life has to offer through a peephole into another room: love, birth, death, religion, fear, isolation, etc. Near the end of the novel, I was wondering what became of all the scandalous material that made the novel so controversial, and then realized I had been reading O’Brien’s redacted translation. But I loved it so much that I have already ordered the full, uncensored translation, and I’m excited to reread the novel and see how this translation differs from the earlier, toned-down version. I couldn't have chosen a better novel to return to reading after several months of a stressful cross-country move (and back) during the pandemic.
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Rejecting Absolute Misery
I think the reason I enjoy Barbusse is the chance to escape into another reality, an unexpected metaphysics. I get the same sense while reading Poe. Both create an enclosed world in which things happen that are eternal and somehow immune from the trivial influences of everyday life. In the era of Trump I find this somewhat comforting.
The reader sees only what the unnamed protagonist sees in The Inferno. And since this narrator barely interacts with the fellow residents in his Parisian boarding house, what he sees is almost all there is. He and everyone else are Leibnizian Monads, self-contained, self-conscious entities which bound and re-bound off one another like balls on a billiard table. As one of his characters says, “I am crying because one is alone.” The peculiar grammar of this phrase is significant- one represents all.
But these are Monads who suffer acutely because they have windows which allow the world to touch their consciousness directly. One window in particular, a chink between bricks allowing visual access to the room next door, is the one the narrator becomes obsessed by. Life, it seems, is a matter of which window we choose to observe it from. And this one allows life to be seen without the normal social conventions so that its duplicity and perversion can be seen for what they are. People still lie and dissemble but they do so with a sort of integrity that reveals their true intentions, the ‘innards’ of consciousness so to speak.
Through this window the protagonist observes different versions of fear and love, or rather variations on an emotion of fearful love: “love is only a kind of festival of solitude.” It appears that we all share an experience of Leibnizian loneliness. The room he watches is some sort of temporary sanctuary for people whose lives have been damaged, they believe, by circumstances, or by sin, or by painful memories, or by design. But if we share loneliness, we are not entirely alone. An unexpected paradox.
This hidden perspective on life makes the observer-protagonist god-like and he initially appears to have delusions of grandeur: “I who was a spectator apart from men and whose gaze soared above them... “ But only because he is able to see reality without convention; he has no power to alter this reality, to coordinate it in order to produce a better outcome. Hence the implacability of “Fate” which is the inevitable “separation of human beings that deceive themselves.” The deception is accepting the lie that we are self-contained.
It is because we are not self-contained that we suffer. The problem of life however is not the removal of suffering; it the the realization of happiness within the suffering. As Amy, the female object of observation realizes, “‘I am the god of my own happiness. What I want,' she added, with perfect simplicity, 'is to be happy, I, just as I am, and with all my suffering... If everything that hurts us were to be removed, what would remain?'" Indeed, what would remain is the monadic shell of a human being, a husk.
In Leibniz’s philosophy, God is responsible for everything. He directs the interactions among the human entities which are enclosed by their own experiences. His presumption is that none of us can appreciate the innermost experience of any other, that we are permanently insulated from everyone else. Given the obvious suffering abroad in the world such a philosophy makes God a sadist and human beings inert particles of self-consciousness who are condemned to Hell from birth.
Barbusse’s protagonist is a morally ambiguous character. But his very ambition to be god-like reveals something important to himself: “I, like other men, am moulded out of infinity.” Like other men. This seems to me the key to escaping the inferno - the god-like quality of not individual human beings, but collectively of the entire human species. What constitutes this divinity is the ability to discern, at least partially, what’s happening inside others. This capacity mitigates suffering by diluting it with empathy for the suffering of others.
In the early part of the story, the protagonist says, apparently without irony, “If everyone were like me, all would be well.” And, remarkably, this is what he finds to be the case. People are like him. We are more than the mere individual desire not to die because we are somehow mutually contained within each other. This is why "Every human being is the whole truth.” All of humanity is within the individual, as he is within the rest. There could hardly be a more striking revelation than this in any religion.
I think the reason I enjoy Barbusse is the chance to escape into another reality, an unexpected metaphysics. I get the same sense while reading Poe. Both create an enclosed world in which things happen that are eternal and somehow immune from the trivial influences of everyday life. In the era of Trump I find this somewhat comforting.
The reader sees only what the unnamed protagonist sees in The Inferno. And since this narrator barely interacts with the fellow residents in his Parisian boarding house, what he sees is almost all there is. He and everyone else are Leibnizian Monads, self-contained, self-conscious entities which bound and re-bound off one another like balls on a billiard table. As one of his characters says, “I am crying because one is alone.” The peculiar grammar of this phrase is significant- one represents all.
But these are Monads who suffer acutely because they have windows which allow the world to touch their consciousness directly. One window in particular, a chink between bricks allowing visual access to the room next door, is the one the narrator becomes obsessed by. Life, it seems, is a matter of which window we choose to observe it from. And this one allows life to be seen without the normal social conventions so that its duplicity and perversion can be seen for what they are. People still lie and dissemble but they do so with a sort of integrity that reveals their true intentions, the ‘innards’ of consciousness so to speak.
Through this window the protagonist observes different versions of fear and love, or rather variations on an emotion of fearful love: “love is only a kind of festival of solitude.” It appears that we all share an experience of Leibnizian loneliness. The room he watches is some sort of temporary sanctuary for people whose lives have been damaged, they believe, by circumstances, or by sin, or by painful memories, or by design. But if we share loneliness, we are not entirely alone. An unexpected paradox.
This hidden perspective on life makes the observer-protagonist god-like and he initially appears to have delusions of grandeur: “I who was a spectator apart from men and whose gaze soared above them... “ But only because he is able to see reality without convention; he has no power to alter this reality, to coordinate it in order to produce a better outcome. Hence the implacability of “Fate” which is the inevitable “separation of human beings that deceive themselves.” The deception is accepting the lie that we are self-contained.
It is because we are not self-contained that we suffer. The problem of life however is not the removal of suffering; it the the realization of happiness within the suffering. As Amy, the female object of observation realizes, “‘I am the god of my own happiness. What I want,' she added, with perfect simplicity, 'is to be happy, I, just as I am, and with all my suffering... If everything that hurts us were to be removed, what would remain?'" Indeed, what would remain is the monadic shell of a human being, a husk.
In Leibniz’s philosophy, God is responsible for everything. He directs the interactions among the human entities which are enclosed by their own experiences. His presumption is that none of us can appreciate the innermost experience of any other, that we are permanently insulated from everyone else. Given the obvious suffering abroad in the world such a philosophy makes God a sadist and human beings inert particles of self-consciousness who are condemned to Hell from birth.
Barbusse’s protagonist is a morally ambiguous character. But his very ambition to be god-like reveals something important to himself: “I, like other men, am moulded out of infinity.” Like other men. This seems to me the key to escaping the inferno - the god-like quality of not individual human beings, but collectively of the entire human species. What constitutes this divinity is the ability to discern, at least partially, what’s happening inside others. This capacity mitigates suffering by diluting it with empathy for the suffering of others.
In the early part of the story, the protagonist says, apparently without irony, “If everyone were like me, all would be well.” And, remarkably, this is what he finds to be the case. People are like him. We are more than the mere individual desire not to die because we are somehow mutually contained within each other. This is why "Every human being is the whole truth.” All of humanity is within the individual, as he is within the rest. There could hardly be a more striking revelation than this in any religion.
readingwithsammi's review against another edition
2.0
“There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of living.”
Also known as "The Inferno".
2.5 stars - I really wanted to round up to 3 stars but I just... couldn’t.
Another book I really wanted to love & maybe kind of did?
This story basically follows a voyeur or “peeping Tom” as some may say. From his room he watches his neighbors come and go in the next room. He sees them when they’re vulnerable, when they think they’re alone & can truly be themselves. He sees birth, love, betrayal & death. It’s honestly a super cool look into the human psyche & the whole book has some cool symbolism for “hell”. It’s all about life’s moments.
But with all its potential and literary charm, I just couldn’t get captivated into it & fell a bit short for me. It certainly is a great foundation (early 1900s was when it was written) for some amazing stories to build from.
Boxall’s list book.
Also known as "The Inferno".
2.5 stars - I really wanted to round up to 3 stars but I just... couldn’t.
Another book I really wanted to love & maybe kind of did?
This story basically follows a voyeur or “peeping Tom” as some may say. From his room he watches his neighbors come and go in the next room. He sees them when they’re vulnerable, when they think they’re alone & can truly be themselves. He sees birth, love, betrayal & death. It’s honestly a super cool look into the human psyche & the whole book has some cool symbolism for “hell”. It’s all about life’s moments.
But with all its potential and literary charm, I just couldn’t get captivated into it & fell a bit short for me. It certainly is a great foundation (early 1900s was when it was written) for some amazing stories to build from.
Boxall’s list book.
tapsandtomes's review
3.0
See here for my full review! http://ilayreading.com/2015/09/24/the-infernohell/
This is heavy stuff. Our voyeur is a philosophical man, and the book is a manifesto of anti-religion, as he compares his “experiences” against those of Peter in Revelations. It’s pretty athiestic, except he does say “I believe” quite often (hence why I say “Anti-Religion). It’s definitely an interesting book, but very complicated and, again, heavy. And did I mention it’s creepy?
Hell also deals quite heavily in death, and towards the end he talks about how we are all alone–so this could be quite triggering for some people. It does get quite dark.
I don’t quite know how I feel about this one, other than I’m creeped out by it. It’s definitely deep, and requires further analysis. I might read it again at some point, but for now, I’m not going to let myself dwell on it.
This is heavy stuff. Our voyeur is a philosophical man, and the book is a manifesto of anti-religion, as he compares his “experiences” against those of Peter in Revelations. It’s pretty athiestic, except he does say “I believe” quite often (hence why I say “Anti-Religion). It’s definitely an interesting book, but very complicated and, again, heavy. And did I mention it’s creepy?
Hell also deals quite heavily in death, and towards the end he talks about how we are all alone–so this could be quite triggering for some people. It does get quite dark.
I don’t quite know how I feel about this one, other than I’m creeped out by it. It’s definitely deep, and requires further analysis. I might read it again at some point, but for now, I’m not going to let myself dwell on it.
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